The Evolution of Blue Mountain Cards

Blue Mountain Cards offers a wide selection of greeting cards created in its signature style of soothing nature illustrations combined with freeform poetry and prose. A great deal of Blue Mountain Cards business comes from its line of electronic greeting cards designed for delivery over the Internet via email.
Blue Mountain Cards was founded by Boulder, Colorado husband and wife team Stephen Schutz and Susan Polis Schutz as Blue Mountain Arts, originally as a vehicle for them to spend time together sharing their hobbies. Combining watercolors that Stephen painted with poetry that Susan wrote into posters that appealed to the hippie mindset of the early 1970s, they persuaded a local bookstore to sell a few of those posters, which quickly sold out. Other stores quickly followed suit. The Schutzes then directed their attention to the development of Blue Mountain Cards greeting cards and introduced the blank all occasion greeting card for personal handwritten messages. Another innovation credited to Blue Mountain Cards was the introduction of expressive freeform poetry and prose to preprinted cards. The product line eventually expanded to include calendars, stationery, and gift books, and their customer base grew.
Blue Mountain Cards entered the Internet age when it launched its website offering free electronic greetings in 1996. Blue Mountain Cards electronic greeting cards were born from the Schutz family practice of communicating with their son, away at college, through email. The family would send birthday and holiday greetings to each other in this manner, and the Blue Mountain Cards electronic greeting card industry began.
Blue Mountain Cards electronic line began with 35 basic designs for the more common occasions such as birthdays, graduations, thank yous, and emotional support. The sender chose and personalized a design from the Blue Mountain Cards website, and an email notification was sent to the recipient, who then accessed the card through a pick up window on the website. What set the Blue Mountain Cards products apart from its competitors was that they were free of charge and capable of being edited to include a personal message from the sender.
Blue Mountain Cards has since expanded to include over a thousand different designs that cover every conceivable American holiday and those of other cultures and religions, with French and Spanish language accessibility. By the end of the twentieth century, Blue Mountain Cards had become one of the most visited sites on the Internet, largely through word of mouth and testimonials of card recipients.